Kaiser Study: Saving Time with Automated Quality Measure Reporting

Having fully or partly automated reporting for six Total Joint Commission measure sets via its electronic health records system, Kaiser Permanente is explaining the time efficiencies it has realized so far.


Having fully or partly automated reporting for six Total Joint Commission measure sets via its electronic health records system, Kaiser Permanente is explaining the time efficiencies it has realized so far.

Among the six measures, Kaiser has been able to extract 43 percent to 100 percent of data elements needed for the measures, according to a study published in the Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association. For instance, reporting of the surgical care improvement measure has been cut by 50 percent.

Other measure sets in the study include acute myocardial infarction, emergency department patient flow, immunizations, pneumonia and VTE prophylaxis. Over an extended period as more data is extracted, the time savings could be substantial as Kaiser reports on about 50 established quality metrics.

“An added benefit of automated reporting of quality measures is that some data becomes available real-time, further enabling us to improve care in an expedited manner,” says Jed Weissberg, M.D., senior vice president of hospitals, quality and care delivery excellence.

The study, available for purchase here, also examines gaps in automated quality reporting from EHRs that are not designed for the task.